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Given the sheer tonnage of snakes Bryan Grieg Fry has seen up close and personal in his decades as a venom researcher, the accolade "coolest snake I've ever seen" has to impress us at kingsnake.com just as much it did as the guys at NatGeo.



From National Geographic:

The creature he’s talking is new to science, having only been described in 2006. It’s the spider-tailed viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) and it is aptly named.

The tail is bizarre. If you saw a close-up photo of it, you’d struggle to believe that there was a snake at the other end. There’s a large orange or grey bulb at the tip, and the scales just before that are bizarrely long and thin. Together, these features look a bit like the legs and abdomen of a spider or their close relatives, the solpugids or ‘camel spiders’.

The resemblance is even more striking when the snake moves. It keeps the rest of the tail still, while moving the tip in a disconcertingly jerky way.

Read the rest, and watch video, here.

Photo: Omid Mozaffari/National Geographic

After a two-year rehab stint at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, Big Mama -- a 245-pound loggerhead sea turtle -- has moved into her new digs at SeaWorld Orlando, where she'll be helping to educate people about her species and threats to wildlife.



From BayNews9:

Big Mama was transported to SeaWorld Orlando from Mississippi where she had been receiving care since she was rescued after an oil spill in 2010 off the coast of Louisiana. Big Mama suffered severe bite wounds to her front and hind flippers making it difficult for her to swim properly. In 2012, Big Mama was deemed non-releasable by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and due to space limitations, IMMS could no longer care for Big Mama.

Read more here.

A University of Michigan biologist may have unlocked the secret of polymorphism and survival in snakes.

From the University of Michigan:

If a mimicry system offers protection from predators, then why hasn't evolution eliminated the "failed mimics," such as ground snakes sporting color patterns that don't remotely resemble a coral snake? That's the puzzle that University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Alison Davis Rabosky has spent the last four years trying to solve.

"Logic predicts that non-mimics should by eaten preferentially by predators and, given enough time, you should end up with a single color type in the population. So the widespread co-occurrence of mimic and non-mimic color patterns is a puzzling and longstanding evolutionary paradox," said Rabosky, an assistant research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an assistant curator of herpetology at the Museum of Zoology.

While Rabosky and colleague Christian L. Cox of the University of Virginia don't claim to have fully resolved the paradox, they did gain insights that help explain the persistence of non-mimic color patterns in ground snakes, especially rare patterns. It turns out that if you're a ground snake, displaying a rare color pattern also provides an evolutionary edge.

Read the rest here... definitely worth the click!

Photo: Eric Bronson/University of Michigan

How did the ancestors of land animals make it out of the sea? New research comparing tiger salamanders and mudskipper fish tells the tale.



From Phys.org:

Paleontological examinations of the invasion of land by vertebrates suggest that limb-like appendages likely originated in aquatic environments, but direct comparisons of the functional consequences of using early limbs with digits, rather than fins, for terrestrial locomotion had not previously been performed. Salamanders are used to model the general body form of early tetrapods (e.g., Paleozoic amphibians) since their morphology has remained essentially unchanged for at least 150 million years. Mudskippers are similar to early fossil precursors of the tetrapods: they use "crutching" movements on land similarly to the hypothesised locomotion of Ichthyostega, and their pectoral fins are similar to elpistostegalids, such as Tiktaalik.

Read more here.

Photo: Sandy Kawano/Phys.org

Dozens of Australian species of the worm-like snakes classified as Scolecophidia have been identified by scientists in Australia.



From Phys.org:

Researchers from France, Australia and the United States analysed the genomes of 741 animals from 27 recognised species in a subgroup known as Australian blind snakes.

The data suggest the number of species is "at least two times the current number of recognised, nominal species," said a summary of the results, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Snakes are divided into two major groups: Scolecophidia, which are generally less than 30 centimetres (12 inches) long, and the more common Alethinophidia, which include boas, pythons, cobras and vipers.

Read more here.

Photo: Phys.org

Check out this video "Road Cruising for snakes," submitted by kingsnake.com user naturebreak.
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This image of a Corn Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ribbitsdad, is our herp photo of the day!



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The city of San Francisco is on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in court-ordered penalties related to destruction of endangered snake and frog species on city-owned land.

From SF Weekly:

The judgment is a victory for the Wildlife Equity Institute and other environmental organizations, which sued the city in 2011 for violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. The nonprofit claimed that the city was killing two protected species, the San Francisco Garter Snake and the California Red-Legged Frog, by draining the 18-hole Sharp Park Golf Course throughout the years.

U.S. District judge Susan Illston denied the city's defense that it wasn't killing the animals, noting that "as a result of construction activities and golf course maintenance operations, all Frogs, all Snakes, and 130 egg masses will be subject to incidental take." As a result, Illston ordered San Francisco to pay $386,000 that will go toward paying the institute's attorney fees.

Read the rest here.

Photo: Victor Abbley/SF Weekly

Forget the Texas two-step. A two-headed Texas cooter turtle is the star of the San Antonio Zoo.

From Time:

The emerald green turtle, which arrived on June 18 and went on display Tuesday, has two noggins conjoined near the neck. Zoo officials named the Texas cooter Thelma and Louise, in tribute to the 1991 movie starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis about a female duo on the run. The turtle, which is actually a pair of unseparated twins, is healthy and eating with both heads.

Read more here.

Check out this video "Garter Snake Eating Toad," submitted by kingsnake.com user naturebreak.
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While dogs are America's most desired pet, and 21 percent of people rated snakes as the most terrifying of all animals, a hefty 18 percent say they want... a pet dinosaur.

From National Geographic:

Public Policy Polling interviewed 603 registered voters by telephone between June 11 and 13, asking them 36 questions relating to their views on pets, animal phobias, and other random creature preferences. The poll, which was not authorized or paid for by any campaign or political organization, had a margin of error of +/-4 percent.

[...]

1. Twenty-one percent rated snakes as the most terrifying animal, followed by alligators at 19 percent and sharks and bears at 18 and 14 percent, respectively.

2. Nine percent of those polled are vegan or vegetarian, while 91 percent are not.

3. Eighteen percent believe the Loch Ness Monster is real.

4. On preferences for an exotic pet, 26 percent said they would choose a tiger, 20 percent a giraffe, 18 percent a dinosaur, and 16 percent an elephant. (Read about exotic animals as pets.)

5. Ninety percent said they would not want a hippopotamus for Christmas—perhaps to the collective relief of hippos worldwide.

Read more here.

A German snake expert lost his life after being bitten by a viper during an educationl presentation in France.

From Time:

Dieter Zorn, 53, was in the middle of a presentation about reptiles when he was bitten several times by an Aspic viper. Due to a rare allergy, he suffered a heart attack and died shortly thereafter.

Zorn had been travelling to different villages across the region, delivering presentations that focused on educating the public about snakes and reptiles and helping them overcome their fears of the creatures. After he got bitten, he managed to get the snake back into a cage, preventing it from attacking anyone else present, the Local notes.

Emergency responders arrived at the scene and attempted to administer a blood thinner, but they weren’t able to save him.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Vasily Fedosenko / REUTERS

There's a new organization in the science world, the Ugly Animal Preservation Society (UAPS), "dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature's more aesthetically challenged children." The organization's president, Simon Watt, is fed up with pandas getting all the attention.

From Discovery News:

Watt, who is also an evolutionary biologist, and his team definitely did not showcase cute and furry pandas at recent UAPS events held at the Edinburgh Science Fest and Bristol's Big Green Week. Media attention instead was paid to animals such as the appropriately named blobfish.

"Our society needs a mascot, one to rival the cute and cuddly emblems of many charities and organizations," shares Watt.

At the end of each UAPS event, the audience votes on a mascot.

One contender is the Chinese giant salamander, with a head resembling an angry block of concrete.

Read the rest, and show some uglies the love, here.

Photo: H. Zell, Wikimedia Commons